This semester is my first time teaching a course on Biblical Ethics. It’s been a steep learning curve for me, so I’ve been preparing by reading more than I normally do for a class.

Over Christmas break I also listened to five free thought-provoking courses:

1. Michael J. Sandel’s course “Justice” at Harvard University. Sandel has taught political philosophy at Harvard since 1980, and over 15,000 students have taken his course. WGBH and Harvard University coproduced the course as a TV series in 2005, which is what you can watch free online or via iTunes. I watched the course and then read Sandel’s corresponding book that released in 2009: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?Sandel is thoughtful, respectful, and provocative. I disagree with his liberal political bent and the ultimate grounds for his ethical views, but I love how he engagingly teaches with the Socratic method. [Read more…] about 5 Free Classes on Ethics

Sometimes well-intentioned people argue for the right thing the wrong way. Their position may be right even though at least one of their arguments is not. This seems to be the case with a popular exegetical and theological argument for the personality of the Holy Spirit. The right position is that the Holy Spirit is a person, and the fallacious argument is that the masculine demonstrative pronoun ἐκεῖνος [ekeinos] in John 14:26, 15:26, and 16:13–14 proves it. Trinitarian theologians through church history have rightly defended the personality of the Spirit, and an astonishing number of defenders appeal to this argument for support.

That’s how Phil Gons and I begin the following article (now available free online as a PDF):

Each controversial question Sam Storms poses could be the subject of an entire book, but he manages to give thoughtful brief answers that aren’t superficial. As a model pastor-theologian, he answers with clarity, wisdom, and grace.

Matt Harmon explains Paul’s letter clause by clause, traces Paul’s argument, reads Paul’s argument in light of the rest of the Bible, and applies the letter to people today. He reminds me of two of his professors when he was working on his PhD at Wheaton: Doug Moo and Greg Beale.

And this year it added phrasing. Phrasing is my favorite method for tracing the argument because it’s so intuitive and clear.

Phrasing goes by many names:

block diagramming

causal layout

grammatical diagramming

phrase diagramming

propositional displays

propositional outlines

sentence flow

text hierarchy

thought-flow diagramming

Phrasing is a flexible and easy-to-use Bible study tool that allows you to visually trace a passage’s argument: simply indent to subordinate. The Biblearc phrasing feature has all sorts of mark-up features from arrows to relationship comments to Dot Notes.

My colleagues Jason DeRouchie and Brian Tabb teamed up with Andy Hubert to show how it works in these five videos: